Obituary

Vivien Flaxman

As academic director and deputy head of Sotheby's Institute (1985-2002), Vivien Flaxman, who has died of cancer aged 64, established its unique MA in art business. Later, she was involved in similar projects for Ithaca College, London, and the Institut d'Etudes Superieures des Arts in Paris. Witty, dynamic and fun, she leaves a generation of students inspired by her scholarship, lucidity and passion. Her personal pleasure in a drawing, a building, a planned landscape was compelling.

Born in Windsor, Berkshire, Vivien was the youngest of three sisters, descended from John Flaxman, the neo-classical sculptor. Her father, the chief freight officer of what became British Railways western region, encouraged his daughters to aspire to excellence. Only the Manchester Guardian was permitted at home.

Educated at the Abbey school, Reading, Vivien became interested in art history in Florence in her teens. She attended the Courtauld Institute from 1962, which is where we met. With an honours degree and a teaching diploma, she returned to Florence to study graphic design, just in time for the 1966 flood. Her account of the city's tribulations was published in the Guardian - to her huge satisfaction. (An outrageous mimic, she acquired a pure Florentine dialect; ever after, no Italian believed she was English.) From 1969, she taught art history at Hull Regional College of Art, later becoming senior lecturer in critical and theoretical studies at Humberside Polytechnic. She was seconded to take her MA (1976) at the Courtauld.

In 1971 she married Paul Johnson, later an inspector of schools, characteristically retaining her maiden name. Regretfully leaving Yorkshire, they finally settled in Windsor, but Cornwall was Vivien's real home, where her family had roots since 1956. She went there frequently to refresh her empathy with the countryside, becoming a dog-walking, bird-watching, tousled, mountain-booted gnome - in contrast to the elegant woman known to her students.

Later years seemed a non-stop lecture tour; London, Paris, America, Florence. But always she continued to learn. The breadth of her interests was startling - from Winnie the Pooh to garden design. She loved music, absorbing a John Field nocturne with the same intensity she devoured an Ingres drawing. Her renderings of Cornish folksongs were memorable.

Vivien cherished her family and friends with unstinting enthusiasm, embracing life with zest. We shall miss her tiny, immaculate figure trotting towards us, beaming rapturously, crying, "Hello, darlings!" She is survived by Paul, their children Polly, Edmund and Felix, and her sisters Carol and Angela.